We live in a gangster state, and our days of laughing at other countries are over.
In 1996, the average monthly sewer bill for a family of four in Birmingham was only $14.71. But that was before the likes of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase.
As Matt Taibbi puts it in Rolling Stone, before they turned shit into pork under a blizzard of incomprehensible swaps and refinance schemes.
Hell, the money was so good, JP Morgan at one point even paid Goldman Sachs $3 million just to back the fuck off, so they could have the rubes of Jefferson County to fleece all for themselves.
Four megabanks hold about $7.4 trillion in assets, according to the most recent regulatory filings with the Federal Reserve. That’s grabbing about 52 percent of the nation’s total output last year alone.